A COUPLE from Ottery St Mary must have been thanking their lucky stars after they were rescued from floodwaters almost four feet deep today, Christmas Day.

They were on their way home in their truck from seeing friends near Colebrooke, Crediton, when they hit the flooded river at Keymelford, a road they have always used to get to their friends and had used earlier in the day.

But they had not anticipated the flood water would rise so quickly or be so deep. They joked if they had been in a Mini they would not have even attempted it.

The flood marker, not visible when they entered the water back around a bend showed only a few inches off four feet in depth, the water beginning to lap over the top rail of the wooden bridge.

They were fortunate that a dog walker had taken advantage of a break in the rain, finding the stranded couple sitting on the roof of their pick-up truck.

Knocking on doors, he found a farmer who went along with his tractor and chains.

But the flood was too deep and strong for the tractor to reach the truck from the Keymelford side, so the farmer drove more than two miles to reach the flood from the other side, the Colebrooke side.

He was then able to take the dog walker on the back of the tractor to the truck to hitch the chain to the towing hook of the vehicle, slowly pulling it - and its owners - out of the water.

After several abortive attempts to start the vehicle, the couple set off to go back to their friends, the dog walker to go back to Yeoford with his dog along the footpath beside the railway and the tractor driver to go back around the roads, through the flood at Yeoford Chapel again and home.

The dog had earlier been enjoying the flood, swimming up and down where the flow was not too fierce.

The flood at Keymelford was exacerbated by one drain pipe under the road being blocked, a second partly so.

At Yeoford Chapel, the problem was mainly blocked drains and the flood being too deep to wade through to clear the leaves.